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No one gave us money, but we did stay with the in laws for a couple of months while our house was being built.
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No, and we wouldn't have asked. Neither of us have parents who are in a position to do something like that without jeopardizing their own financial situation. My dad has helped us do a bunch of updates on our house, though, and has saved us several thousand dollars in labor costs, so that's definitely a help!
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Yes, true
. I am realizing that per this poll with this HB sample, DH was a little closer on his estimated percentage than I was!
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No help at all here.
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They offered, but we went through another channel. They have helped us in other areas though!
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@mrscobee: we wonder about stuff like that too. DH's theory is other people have more debt than we do. My theory is all of our friend spent a lot more time as DINKs than we did. Seeing as how we never were...I was pregnant when I graduated grad school and they stayed at home after #2! Oh well, one day!
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No help
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Nope
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We don't own a home yet because didn't want to be tied down to this area, but I don't see my parents or the ILs giving us any significant money... unless they won the lottery or something.
We also didn't get much help from our parents for our wedding. Some money like $1k but not much. We had a wedding based off what we could afford.
I am curious to see if parents helped in other ways, like school loans or wedding. My parent never had money so anything I wanted I had to pay for and never expected help.
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No help! We bought our house at 24/25 and while some might think we spent a lot for being young, we both had really good paying jobs right out of college and I'd been saving since I was a teenager for a house down payment.
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@jedeve: All those are valid factors! People have such different philosophies on the amount of debt they are willing to take on (for a number of different valid reasons). DH and I spent age 23-29/30 as DINKS, but somehow we don't have a ridiculous amount of savings, but that can certainly be a factor too, especially if people made more than what we do, for longer! I am sure people wonder how we afforded our house, but we built and general contracted it, so most of our down payment was built in equity. But from what I have realized, many many people get big gifts. Nothing wrong with this (as I have mentioned, we got a smaller, but still significant gift <$20,000), but it is just different from how I grew up (parents never had any money, etc.).
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@Mrs.KMM: Wow, that was super smart to have the foresight as a teenager to save for something that far into the future!!
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We didn't have any help with our down payment.
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Wow I did not think the percentage of people who received $20K+ from their parents would be so high. I am trying to recall, I'm not certain we even informed our parents we were buying a house until we were under contract.
Both my parents and DH's parents are the type to want to offer us money and gift us things, so I could picture them making that offer I suppose, but we never gave them an opportunity. It was definitely something we wanted to do on our own.
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Yes but it was not something we asked for. My parents gave us an extremely generous amount as a gift and partly because they want to get rid of their money and give it to us as gifts as they get older. We're incredibly grateful for the gift but it's not something we necessarily needed.
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Indirectly, yes. DH's father passed away suddenly, and the insurance money we received allowed us to put a downpayment on a house. Awful circumstances, but yes, we received help.
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no help offered or received.
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Yes my parents offered, they offered for a couple years, and we accepted so that we could purchase our first house. It was less than 10k and paid for our entire down payment and all appliances for the house since it had none. But we will be paying it back when we sell the house, plus some as a thank you. They really wanted to help and it was the same deal that my moms parents offered them when thy were younger.
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Nope. My parents cut me off financially at 18. And my husband's parents haven't offered us anything. We thankfully don't need their help though.
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We had help from both my parents and IL's, but it was well under $20k. We didn't ask, they both offered. I think my parents gave us $4k and my IL's gave us $2k. Neither of our parents are in the position to give us $20k... I can't even imagine just having an extra $20k lying around. That is so beyond anything I've ever experienced!
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My parents did pitch in, though not that much, when I bought my apartment. More importantly, they paid most of my college tuition from their savings, so I was able to say goodbye to loans and start saving after just a couple of years working. I don't expect them to help when we move to something bigger, but they've already helped plenty!
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We had saved up enough for our deposit and renovations, but my mum gave us an amazing gift that was not expected. My great aunt (closest thing to grandma) had passed away the year before we got married, and probate was settled not long before our wedding. She gave both myself and my brother a substantial amount as an inheritance from our great aunt, which was unexpected and lovely. After we purchased and settled on our house, my in laws offered to help with the renovations and some of the purchasing/labour was put through our business. I am forever grateful to both of them.
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My parents own our mortgage, so we pay them each month instead of a bank. We're in the process of refinancing with a traditional lender this year, though, since (after 5.5 years) my parents would like to free up that money for other investments.
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We haven't bought a house yet, but I seriously doubt we will have help when we do. I don't really picture either of our parents offering, and we would never, ever ask. We've been working hard to save and we'll get there--hopefully in the not-to-distant future
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No, we had absolutely no help. We had a lot saved up since we were both still living at home. We had started looking for a house when we got good jobs (so we could afford to move out) and it took about 7 months to find a house and get possession. In that time, every penny we made we were saving for the down payment. Because we were fortunate like this, we could afford our forever home.
We have friends who we've heard have talked behind our backs about how our parents must have bought us the house and it drives me nuts. Is it really such a stretch to think we could have saved up some money ourselves?
Anyway, we've been living there for 3 years and that still bothers me haha.
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Yes. However, we were not intending to buy at all. There were some interesting events leading up to the purchase of our house... it was very unexpected.
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Nope. Zero help. I saved like crazy in high school and made good money during my internship so all that savings went to the down payment of our first house minus a few thousand that was leftover. I felt proud of myself for being able to afford it.
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DH's father only helped because we got an inheritance after he passed away. No living parents contributed to it.
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No help with down-payment or money. They did help us with some remodeling work because the company they run does the stuff that we needed fixed, so they did that at no cost but it was less than 2k
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No help at all
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We are buying a house next month and will not have help. We saved for a long time to be able to afford the house- we live in an expensive area! However, my in laws have let us know they are giving us a generous gift that we can use for the downpayment. They did the same for my SIL. Since it would be more helpful to us after closing on the house, with updating and furnishing, they will give us the gift then.
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No help for us. However, I'd say about 50% of my friends did have substantial help.
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I didn't think the numbers would be so high, either! I know very few parents of friends with $20K + lying around to begin with. We're in a lower-income area (semi-rural south hit horribly by the recession), so that might have some to do with it, but I only know one person who had significant help from parents. And that's because they have parents who loooove to have attached strings, so that was a major factor in the gifting.
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Yes. My parents gave both my brother and I the down payments for both of our first condo homes (we've both since sold). My in-laws chipped in a little as well. As a result they have no retirement savings and will never pay off their own mortgage. Not really the way I might go about it in the future, but this is the way they wanted to do it. That all being said, I received little to no help with college-- I will be paying off my loan until I'm 50!
ETA: reading the comments, I realize people may not realize that even if you don't have 20k+ "lying around", you can pull it from the assets you do have, which is what my parents did.
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Oh hell no. Most everyone I know that owns had help, and to me even under 20K is significant. I am a diy-for-lifer.
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Per your description, no. But actually, yes. My parents gifted us $10,000 towards our down-payment. We have great credit and some savings, but without their gift we would not have been able to buy a house for a long, long time. My in-laws gifted us some money as well, but it was more of a "house warming" gift, received after the fact. It helped us replenish what we had taken out of savings.
ETA: As someone else mentioned, they were unable to contribute to my college education, so I will be paying off my student loans for a while yet. They are in a better financial place now and wanted to help now since they couldn't before.
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Nope. And I wouldn't want help either.
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@Shizaz: you could argue that living rent free at home IS help- the majority of DH and my expenses since graduating college have been rent payments. If we didn't pay rent for three years that would add up to a lot of money- certainly enough for a down payment in most markets. But I am Not trying to down play how much you worked towards savings or anything like that- I know plenty of people who lived at home and spent freely since they weren't pay rent. And you made the choice to live home instead of paying rent on purpose im sure!
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No...my parents gave me my portion of the down payment. It was my choice for them to help me with that over helping me with the wedding (which they helped with anyway, but we got married in our backyard so it was a low budget wedding). But, it was no where near 20k. Not even close. lol
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We don't own a house yet, but I cannot imagine either of our families offering financial help. They barely gave us any money for our wedding and tend to be very frugal. So I'm going to guess that the money will be $0
. I am realizing that per this poll with this HB sample, DH was a little closer on his estimated percentage than I was!
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